Most Companies Learn From PR Crises. How Come Uber Can't?

They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And for Uber, let’s hope that’s true. The company has suffered scandal after scandal: #DeleteUber and the loss of 200,000 users, a New York Times exposé on abysmal corporate culture, and a lawsuit with Google over stolen intellectual property. And that was just in the first quarter of 2017.

Photo: AP Photo/Thein Zaw

Now, the ridesharing service has admitted to shortchanging its New York City drivers by tens of millions in fares. This latest blunder has obviously destroyed the trust of affected drivers; but it also undercuts the premise of the entire Uber brand. As a data-driven tech leader, you wouldn’t expect them to flub such a simple formula.

Uber is far from the first company to undergo a crisis. In 2017 alone, we’ve seen United Airlines, Pepsi, and McDonald’s blow it big time with public relations nightmares.

Though our company has never faced a crisis of the same magnitude, we’ve certainly had our share of blunders. Like the time a 1-800-GOT-JUNK? truck combusted roadside, or when I hired a COO that nearly bled the company dry. Now, we take precautions to safeguard our brands against future mishaps.

Firstly, I’ve always believed that people don’t fail — systems do. A franchise network like ours relies on a crystal clear set of processes, so screw-ups can usually be traced back to a problem at the systemic level.

In the flaming truck incident, the press speculated that the culprit was a carelessly thrown cigarette. Though the cause was never determined, it did force us to revisit our systems and we discovered a serious disconnect between expectations and behaviour.

Of course, you can’t expect people to uphold standards they don’t understand; systems only work if you communicate effectively. That’s why we keep our systems clean and simple: every process fits on a single piece of paper. Keeping it concise means we can implement our operations seamlessly across a decentralized network in three countries.

Crises will happen to most businesses, but it’s how you respond that matters. It’s about putting people first and owning your mistakes. Uber has at least got this concept right: they’ve fessed up and are paying their drivers back, in full and with interest.

Uber never should have got to this stage in the first place, though, and regaining the faith of its employees and the public will take a whole lot more than a multi-million-dollar payout. Shortchanging people doesn’t build long-term trust — nor does it build long-term business.